Hey folks, Harry here.... read and drool... the master is at work...
Hello Harry,
Interested to see all the fuss about whether Terry Gilliam will be working on Don Quixote or Good Omens next.
I may have some news. Through a series of strokes of luck, I've interviewed both Gilliam and Neil Gaiman in the last couple weeks for a local newspaper in Britain you won't have heard of.
Gilliam said that he planned to start filming Good Omens in April, and that they've been sorting out the final script re-writes and the budget.
He said reducing the book into a two hour film has been a tough process, and some more work was needed on the script to bring the budget down.
He said: "It's a tricky thing when you take a book like that that's so dense, so full of wonderfully funny, smart writing, and you try to reduce it to a two-hour-plus movie.
"And some of my favourite stuff from the book is not in there. It's like cutting limbs and arms off of this child, and hoping there'll still be something left of it at the end.
"Iit's such a big special effects film it's ridiculous. Every scene has got something in it. And I've got to create heaven and hell."
Asked what the trickiest part of Good Omens will be, Gilliam replies, deadpan: "Well, the apocalypse has always been difficult."
He fears his version of Armageddon may not be as impressive as the one we've been watching on our television screens since the terrorist attacks on September 11.
"The live-action version has been a pretty good start." he says, grimly " I don't know if the movie will be as good as what we've seen already."
On the subject of Don Quixote, he said that he was in the process of trying to buy the scripts back from the insurers, and was keen to get back to work on it soon.
He is also excited about a documentary on the failed film, which was shot by the two grad students from Philadelphia who did the making of 12 Monkeys, the Hamster Factor.
Gilliam said: "What you're going to see before we ever get the film made or remade is a documentary at the Berlin Film Festival on the non-making of Don Quixote. It's going to be up there with the great documentaries about films, like the making of Apocalypse Now.
"They got a lot of great material, and it's about the madness of making something that just dies on you.
"And they're going to use some clips from the film in it - we're trying to get them to use as much as possible. I'll have to reshoot all that stuff anyway if we ever get it up and running again."
By the way, Neil Gaiman was also very excited about the Good Omens film - though he's already said that in public on quite a few occasions - and joked that he was fed up with the lack of news from Gilliam.
He said: "Every time I ring bloody Terry Gilliam I say 'What's the progress on the Good Omens film? People keep asking me.' He's always off doing ridiculous things like being a judge at the Cannes film festival, which I consider selfish and very unhelpful of him.
"I think he should stop doing things like that, and stay home and answer the phone.
"The last thing I've heard he has figured out a way to put the footnotes in. He's very proud of the footnotes. He told me there will be pointy arrows, during scenes like the baby swap. In the scene where we have three babies moving round he wants signs with 'Baby A', 'Baby B' and 'Baby C'. And I thought 'Good, he understands the book, he understands how to do it more than I ever did.'
"I remember Terry [Pratchett] and I went out to Hollywood together and had one of those great awful, aborted film experiences which everyone should have, that was magnificently dreadful. After that we said 'We're done on anything to do with Good Omens films, forever'. And we spent years saying no to anyone who wanted to buy it. Then Terry Gilliam came along and it was like 'Not only can you buy it, we'll happily pay your cab fare home.' We liked him. People say are you involved in the film, and we say 'no'."
Now that the publicity tours for his book American Gods are over, Gaiman should be back at home finishing off the script for the Death: High Cost of Living movie.
Hope this is of some interest,
John Nefastis
